The art of hosting a road race as well as the equipment used to participate in it were very different back in 1979 when Bolder Boulder founder Steve Bosley held the first edition of what has become this town's signature event.

Shoes were heavy and thick and nowhere near as malleable as they are today. Air-sole cushioning was just catching on. Shorts were shorter. T-shirts were cotton and if you wanted to listen to music while running the race you either had to hum a tune or be able to carry a bulky portable radio for 10 kilometers.

Frank Shorter was the face of American distance running at the time after winning the Olympic marathon in 1972 and taking home the silver medal in 1976. He remembers the look and feel of those early races well.

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"The shirts would be a lot tighter," he said. "Their T-shirts would look like they were one size too small. Their shorts would look like they were one size too small. They would be wearing socks up their calves that would have stripes on the top and the shoes would have had thinner soles and not have that thick cushioning sole made out of ethyl vinyl acetate, EVA we call it. Hair would have been longer and there would have been a lot more mustache's and long sideburns."

There also were far fewer women and girls running back then. Did you know only 30 percent of participants were female in the first two years? Since 1996, females have made up at least 51 percent of the field.

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The svelte look of the modern runner with all the technological wizardry available to them would have blown minds back in the day whether it be running shoes with toes, iPods, heart-rate monitors and guidance from GPS, not to mention having your time texted to you within seconds of crossing the finish line.

The look and feel of race day sure has come a long way in 34 years.

Shorter says the technology today has drastically improved things for the average runner making it much easier to train smarter and perform better on race day. Shorter said the first time he used a heart-rate monitor, he went to University of Colorado track and ran 12 repeat 400s. After running the first, he waited to feel ready for the second. When he did he looked at his pulse monitor and it read 120, which is exactly the point Shorter says physiologists recommend starting again. The same thing happened again and again after each successive 400.

"Those of us who were training and competing before GPS and heart rate monitors intuitively knew where those limits were," he said. "We could kind of sense it. I think what has happened is, now this equipment lets people who, perhaps, aren't as intuitive do the same thing. They enhance your training if intuitively you can't do it.

"I think it's allowed a lot more people to achieve fitness and competition. I only bring up the anecdote to show that it's not magic."

When the Bolder Boulder was just getting started, the most common method for timing races was using a chronomix timer. The times were recorded and matched to finishers bib numbers and both pieces of information would be manually entered into a computer to produce a master list and official order of finish. It was time consuming and not exactly racer friendly.

Bosley remembers staying up the whole night following the first race getting all the times right for the 2,200 participants.

"I was saying, 'There has got to be a better way to do this,'" Bosley said. "Quickly we evolved from that."

The race added wave starts and chute finishes, bib tags and bar codes over time to improve accuracy and make the race a more enjoyable experience for those who participated. Only in recent years with the advent of chip timing has the workload drastically decreased at the finish line and Bosley has been able to get some sleep.

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